Waiting four hours to vote? Unacceptable when other options could exist

People wait to vote at Community Revival Center, 1005 Evergreen SE on Election Day. Voters had been waiting as long as four hours to cast votes. Cory Morse | MLive.com

Editor's note: The following opinion piece reflects the views of The Grand Rapids Press editorial board.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – No one should have to wait four hours to vote.

Michigan has 7.3 million registered voters, and lawmakers need look at what is happening in other states that allow people to head to the polls over a several weeks instead of one day.

State residents now have two options. They should have more.

They can arrive at the polls on Election Day and potentially face an hours-long line. Or, they can request an absentee ballot if they are older than 60 or are hindered by factors including being unable to vote without assistance or will be out of town.

About 1.2 million Michigan voters cast absentee ballots this year, but the state needs to do more to make voting easier.

Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, like several of her Republican predecessors, likes the idea of removing the restrictions on absentee voting, essentially allowing anyone to cast a ballot up to 45 days early.

Michigan would hardly be blazing new territory here. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that 32 states allow voters to cast a ballot in person during a designated period before Election Day.

Another option is early in-person voting, where a resident would complete a ballot at a municipal office and turn it in on the spot. That’s an option becoming popular in other states.

Johnson has argued against this, saying those other states have statewide and countrywide systems, and Michigan elections are covered by 1,538 municipal clerks.
It seems that with modern technology, willing minds can come up with a solution or an alternative, rather than dismissing the notion out of hand.

Bills lifting the any reason absentee ballot restrictions have died in Republican-controlled Capitol chambers since 1993, with GOP lawmakers seeming to fear that their candidates would hurt their party’s candidates.

That’s not a good enough reason.

And it is especially true because Republicans have added to the length of the November ballots in the name of saving money and eliminating so-called stealth elections.

For example, this year’s November ballot was the first to include local school board races. Those candidates joined a ballot already crowded with contests for the courts, university boards, state school boards, municipal races and six lengthy and complicated ballot proposals.

Some voters at the Community Revival Center in southeast Grand Rapids reported waiting four hours to vote. There were multi-hour waits elsewhere.

How long would you wait in line?

City Clerk Lauri Parks listed reasons for the delays, including the longer ballots, small polling places and too few workers. Mayor George Heartwell added that a bottle-necked voter check-in process as a major cause.

Each of those issues could be settled by allowing Michigan voters to file absentee ballots for any reason, or in-person prior to an election.

Voting should be a celebration of our democracy, not an endurance contest.